Harry Potter and the Battle of the Sexes
by rissapen
Summary: Who needs good vs evil when you've got girls vs boys? TO THE LESBIAN WHO SENT ME A REVIEW: Check the update. I responded. =P
1. The Battle Begins

It was a normal morning at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. At first. The students had been back at school for a couple of weeks, and life had settled into a comfortable routine. Harry Potter and his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were eating breakfast in the Great Hall with Ron's twin brothers Fred and George and their baby sister Ginny. As usual, the conversation had turned to Quidditch, which the boys discussed passionately while the girls talked to themselves, probably about "stupid boys and their sports," Harry figured. After five or ten minutes, however, he realized that the girls didn't seem to be grumbling at all, which was quite unusual (especially for Ginny, who was apparently something of a whiner). They seemed to be looking at something and giggling, which was also quite unusual (especially for Hermione, who was definitely not a giggler). Before Harry asked what they were looking at, however, the bell had rung for their first class-- double Potions with the Slytherins --and all unusual activity fled from his mind as he dragged himself to the hated dungeons, feeling only slightly cheered that after Potions was Care of Magical Creatures with his dear friend Hagrid.  
  
Four hours, three Centaurs, and sixty points from Gryffindor later, Harry and his friends trudged into the Great Hall for lunch. Harry was surprised when Hermione and Ginny chose to sit with Lavender and Parvati and their gaggle of giggling girls instead of sitting with him and Ron, until he noticed that the same thing seemed to be happening at ALL the tables in the Hall. Harry examined the hall carefully for a few minutes, his eyes lingering over Cho sitting with a group of girls at the Ravenclaw table, and yes, even at the Slytherin table the girls were crowded into one or two groups and were discussing something quietly (and gigglingly). Harry nudged Ron and pointed this out. Ron just shrugged. Well, that made sense, Ron really wasn't very good with girls.  
  
The rest of the day continued smoothly until dinner. The girls were again separated from the boys, this time louder and much more obnoxiously. Harry saw all the girls crowding around Hermione, which was really rare as Hermione wasn't the most popular female at Gryffindor by any means. Ron followed Harry's gaze.  
  
"Thrr lknn 't hrr Rithmnnsee bkk?" ("They're looking at her Arithmancy book?") Ron questioned through his food. Harry stared at the book for a minute before noticing that no, they weren't looking at the book...they were looking at a parchment behind it. Before he could stop and think, Harry pulled out his wand.  
  
"Accio Parchment!" He grinned at the girls' faces as he grabbed hold of the parchment. All of the girls wore an identical expression of horror, except for Hermione, who stood up.  
  
"Give that back, Harry!" she screeched, causing everyone else in the Great Hall to turn and stare. When the other girls in the room saw what was in Harry's hands, their faces started to match those of the Gryffindor girls.  
  
"What IS this you gals have been giggling over?.." Harry gave a smirk lightly reminiscent of his rival Draco Malfoy and glanced down at the paper. The smirk faded immediately, however, as he saw what was written on the parchment. "Wh...what the hell is THIS?!" he yelped, causing Ron, Fred, and George to jump up and stare over his shoulder at the paper. Fred and George glanced the paper over and burst out laughing. Ron just stared in abject horror, and Harry scanned the list (for that's what it was):  
  
Hogwart's Hottest:  
  
Best Muscles: Roger Davies  
  
Nicest Smile: Justin Finch-Fletchley  
  
Best Ass: Blaise Zabini  
  
Biggest Manslut: Seamus Finnegan  
  
On and on it went. Harry flushed to see his own name, not once, but twice, around the end:  
  
Nicest Eyes: Harry Potter  
  
Best Dressed: Draco Malfoy  
  
Best Kisser: Lee Jordan  
  
Boy we'd Most Like to Try: Blaise Zabini  
  
Most Shaggable Overall: Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter  
  
By this time, all the boys had found someone with a copy of the parchment and were glancing it over. Some were ecstatic at being on the list, others embarassed, and still others embarassed not to be on it. Fred and George pounded Lee and Harry on the back, hooting and catcalling, Ron shot dagger glares at Hermione (probably because he had won the category of "Sweetest Idiot"), who in turn glared at Harry and from the Slytherin table, Draco gave off his infamous smirk.  
  
Harry, by this point red enough in the face to rival his own Quidditch robes, turned to Hermione with a look that plainly said, "how could you DO this to me?" Hermione quailed under his look and stomped out of the room. Fortunately, this was covered by Professor McGonagal's magically magnified voice, calling for order.  
  
"I don't know what this ruckus is about-- nor do I WANT to know," she scowled fiercely, "but I must insist that you all quiet down!"  
  
Within ten seconds, the noise level was back to normal. But the damage had been done; the only thing anyone was talking about for the rest of the evening was the list.  
  
Harry sat in his bed, still blushing furiously. "As if I needed any MORE attention, honestly, I hope Ron isn't upset. And to tie with Malfoy, that's dead embarassing, that is! I can't believe Hermione was the ringleader in all this!" This was true, he'd discovered. Lavender and Parvati had been all too eager to talk about their fearless leader's calling of several meetings, in which all the girls in the school--yes, all of them--had voted on the various categories. Harry sighed and rolled onto his side. How would Hermione feel if such a list came out on the girls? He grinned, knowing she'd be horrified. An idea began to take form in his head as he sat up in bed and woke his roommates up to discuss it with them.  
  
* * *  
  
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Ron whined as Harry flung his Invisibility Cloak over his friend and himself. "I mean, we could get in so much trouble, and I wanna go back to bed, come on Harry, we don't have to talk to him to do this..."  
  
"But it wouldn't be proper vengeance if we didn't get EVERYONE in on it, and we need his help to do it!" Harry shoved Ron out the portrait hole, forcing him to be quiet lest they get caught. The two fifteen-year-old boys made their way up to the Astronomy tower and flung off the cloak when they saw the person they were looking for--Draco Malfoy.  
  
"Well, Potter, Weasel," the blonde boy drawled, "what IS this all about? Are we going to duel or something? Or are the two 'Most Shaggable' boys in Hogwarts going to get it on while the Weasel takes pictures to sell to the press?"  
  
"In your dreams, Malfoy," Harry rolled his eyes as he stopped Ron from attacking his rival.  
  
"Then what do you want?" Malfoy snapped. "I need my beauty sleep!" Ron snorted.  
  
"Hang on, Malfoy, we're waiting for a couple of other people." Harry replied.  
  
Malfoy looked taken aback. "What, are we going for an orgy here?"  
  
"Don't be ridiculous, ferret boy!" Ron couldn't keep himself quiet anymore. "We're planning revenge!"  
  
"Revenge?" a fourth, soft voice broke in. Justin Finch-Fletchley and Terry Boot, of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, respectively, stood at the tower door.  
  
"Yes, revenge. We four are the most, well, popular boys in our houses, so we can get the others to join forces with us. Guys, it's time to set aside our house differences and fight the real war that's been fought since time began: G--"  
  
"Good versus Evil?" Justin grinned at Harry. "And you invited Malfoy?"  
  
Harry blinked owlishly. "Err...well..no. I was going to say Girls versus Boys."   
  
* * *  
  
A week later, the new list appeared. Unlike the girls, however, the boys made no effort to hide their list. Hermione snatched one copy out of Harry's hands and looked it over, eyes widening.  
  
Hogwart's Hottest Part Two  
  
Best Breasts: Parvati and Padma Patil  
  
Nicest Smile: Cho Chang  
  
Best Ass: Ginny Weasley  
  
Ron had been quite against his sister's presence on the list, but it was almost unanimous among the other boys, and he'd been forced to let it be.  
  
Biggest Slut: Susan Bones  
  
Nicest Eyes: Lisa Turpin  
  
Best Dressed: Pansy Parkinson  
  
Girl We'd Most Like to Try: Hermione Granger  
  
Hermione looked appalled. "What do you mean, 'most like to try!?'" she screeched shrilly at Harry.  
  
"Probably the same thing you gals meant." Harry leaned back in his seat and grinned.  
  
"Most Shaggable Overall, Parvati and Padma!?" she cried. "You've got to be kidding!" She toned her voice down as Parvati glared at her. "This is ridiculous. I'm going to Dumbledore." With that, Hermione stood and stomped out of the room. Fortunately, Harry had been prepared for this. He met Malfoy's eyes, and both boys stood up and walked out of the room.   
  
* * *  
  
"Professor Dumbledore, this is sexual harassment, pure and simple!" Hermione declared shrilly.  
  
"Headmaster," Malfoy stepped forward, "perhaps our list was sexual harassment, but we would like to show you something..." Harry whipped out the original list and set it next to the new one on Dumbledore's desk. "We feel that we have merely fought fire with fire, Professor. Perhaps it wasn't the most mature way to deal with the issue, but we felt that this was the best way to handle it, as we didn't want to go running to involve the faculty, who we felt might be biased," Malfoy finished smoothly with a winning smile as Hermione glared on.  
  
"Yeah, really, Hermione, why is OURS sexual harassment and yours ISN'T? Boys can be sexually harassed too, you know!" Harry pouted at his female friend, who flushed and bit her lip.  
  
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "Yes, yes, I believe that the issue has been resolved this way. No punishment on either side."  
  
"But--" Hermione started and bit her lip again before storming out of the room.  
  
Draco and Harry left the room. Draco turned and gave Harry a mischevious grin. "You know she's going to try and get back at us. Those girls'd jump off a cliff if she led them to it."  
  
Harry grinned back. "Yeah, she will. I know Hermione, she's not gonna just give up. Think you'll be ready for whatever she pulls?"  
  
"I was born ready." Draco's mischevious grin turned evil. "And I'm sure we'll think up a wonderful revenge to that, too."  
  
When Harry returned to the Gryffindor common room, all the girls were sitting together on one side and the boys on the other. The groups were talking low and glaring at each other, though occasionally someone would raise their voice to say something rude about the opposite sex. It was one of the quietest nights Harry could ever remember in the tower.  
  
The gloves had been thrown, and the war was on! 


	2. That's poetreee!

A week had passed with nothing happening, but Harry and Draco cautioned all the boys of Hogwarts not to let their guard down-- Harry knew that Hermione wasn't going to just let this go, and he also knew that he and Ron had taught her too well when it came to pranks and revenge. He was just glad that Fred and George were on their side, not hers.

  


For the first couple of days after the now-infamous lists had been passed around, all the girls refused to talk to all the boys, except when utterly necessary in class. The tension was horrid. Even couples weren't speaking. Quidditch practice was hell, as the twins (who were co-captains) kept teasing the girls and the girls kept throwing Quaffles at them. Harry enjoyed spending the time just flying around randomly, though, and ignoring the skirmish below.

Harry liked to think that the girls' reactions proved that they were embarassed at being outwitted. Fortunately, by the third day things had calmed down enough that the two genders began to talk again. Of course, some damage was irreparable-- the boys and girls were each sitting at opposite sides of the table now. Relieved though he was that Hermione was helping him with his homework again, Harry wasn't stupid enough to believe that she had forgiven them. The topic of the lists never came up, and Harry figured that if she didn't say outright she'd forgiven them, then she hadn't. He was certain that there were two reasons for the girls being willing to speak to the boys again: One, that they were tired of having to not talk to half of the people at the school, just as the boys were. The second reason was that the girls probably had a plan of some sort. Harry just knew something was going to happen.

  


Then it did.

  


Harry had gotten up early as usual (he chose not to sleep too long, for fear of nightmares), and went to wake Ron up for breakfast. However, instead of the usual "Ron, you prat, get the hell up or we'll miss breakfast!" that normally came out of his mouth, he said:

  


"Ron, Ron, you must wake up, or we'll be unable to sup!"

  


Ron sat up and gaped. He tried to say "What the fuck is wrong with you?" but it came out as

  


"Sirrah, something's amiss-- what's up with this?"

  


Harry raised an eyebrow and rushed to wake up the other boys in the dorm. "Boys, boys, awake you must! The girls have struck, that much I trust!" Some ten minutes later it had been discovered that all of the Gryffindor boys had been struck with a sudden need to recite poetry. Harry sent Hedwig to what he had affectionately dubbed the "House Representatives" (Draco, Justin, and Terry), and was not surprised to learn that they, too, had turned to poetry during the night. The boys all trudged out to the Gryffindor common room, only to find the girls already there, a smug expression tainting each and every face.

  


"Why Harry, Ron...is something wrong?" Hermione stood and smiled sweetly at her two best friends. Harry had to grab Ron's arm and cover his mouth to keep him from trying to yell at her (he felt that its being a rhyming verse would detract from the offensiveness of the statement). Harry knew that his housemates' eyes were all on him, as he'd become the unofficial leader of the male sex, waiting for a witty retort. Harry thought for what felt like far too long and grinned evilly when a thought struck him. He was glad he was such good friends with Hermione, because he knew exactly what to do to annoy her.

"Hickery dickery doc," he started, sing-songingly. "You can go suck on my--" He was drowned out by a sudden roar of laughter and Hermione's screech. The brunette turned bright red. She HATED sex talk in public. Ironically enough, she was quite proficient in talking about sex when in private with just her best friends, and perhaps with Lavender and Parvati. But only he friends knew that, the rest of Gryffindor saw her as rather uptight about such things and this just added to their laughter. Hermione abhorred the discussion of sex in public, thought it was crass and stupid, and everyone in Gryffindor knew it. The girls scowled fiercely behind her.

"Just wait until you boys--" she spat the word out in a way normally reserved for Slytherins or Death Eaters --"get to class!" With that, she stood, "hmph"ed, stuck her nose in the air, and stomped out of the room to go to the Great Hall. Each and every girl stood up and followed suit (nose in the air and everything). Harry rolled his eyes. She was right, though. He couldn't keep spouting out dirty rhymes in class. He shuddered at the thought of being overheard saying "There once was a man from Nantucket" in front of McGonagal. Well...best worry about that when the time comes, he supposed.

"Fellows, we must follow the girls, I'm hungry for some Cinnamon Swirls!" he announced, blushed at the lame rhyme, and led the company out of the room.

  


* * *

  


Breakfast was quite an affair. "Can you pass the plate of ______ my mate?" became the common way to ask for food to be passed amongst the men and boys of Hogwarts. The girls made a big show of being able to speak without rhyming, grinning all around. Draco and Harry met with Terry and Justin at the Ravenclaw table and discussed the situation (with some difficulty). Draco was certain that the girls had used a Poetry Potion, but was unsure of how they managed to ensure that every single boy in Hogwarts had drunk it. He was also unsure of how they'd gotten the ingredients to make enough of the stuff for half of the student population, and he didn't know how long the potion's effects would last or if there was a cure. 

  


For this, Harry, Justin, and Terry sent Draco as their representative to Professor Snape. The other boys didn't go along-- Snape was less likely to want to help them. It didn't help much that Draco could only tell Snape that "The femmes have struck again, putting poison in our gin. We speak only poetry pure, but do you have a cure?" It helped even less that Professor McGonagal wasn't even trying to hide her peals of laughter. It was still less helpful that Madame Hooch had-- very loudly --congratulated Hermione. And it was absolutely horrid when Snape informed Draco (once he'd figured out exactly what potion Draco was talking about) that there was no cure for the Poetry Potion, and that they'd have to wait for it to wear off, which would take about a day. He announced this very loudly, to ensure that all the boys knew it and didn't go whining to him for help, but unfortunately this meant that the girls heard as well. Of course, they already knew it, thanks to Hermione.

  


The boys sighed, knowing that they'd just have to deal with classes speaking only in rhyme. Potions was, for once, the least annoying of their classes: Snape took pity on the boys (perhaps only because the girls had apparently stolen a large amount of stuff from his private stores), and allowed the boys to sit and take notes while the girls did the actual making of the potions. Harry would have grinned as he jotted down the details of what Hermione was doing, if he hadn't been so certain that Snape would have taken points for it.

  


Divination was the worst, as Sybil Trelawny sat there babbling on and on about how the girls of Hogwarts were all destined to be great one day. And Harry was destined to die painfully, naturally. She even matched up girls with boys to do the tarot readings, and the boys were forced to tell the girls' their fortunes in spooky rhymes. Harry was paired up with Lavender, and he grinned and whispered eerily, "There once was a barmaid from Wales, on her breasts were the prices of ale, and on her behind, for the sake of the blind, the prices were tattooed in Braille."

  


Lavender gaped and flushed red at him. "THAT is my FUTURE?!" Harry just grinned. This limerick thing was working pretty well.

  


Unfortunately, Trelawny heard him, and assigned him an extra one-scroll essay on the importance of the Death card in the tarot. Harry sighed. Naturally.

  


Lunch continued on the same as breakfast had. The boys were refusing to talk to the girls, and the girls were going out of their way to force the boys to say something-- anything --just to hear them rhyme. Ron was getting the worst of this, as he could never keep silent at hearing a barb. His ears were now as red as his hair.

  


Care of Magical Creatures didn't even really happen. Hagrid just sat there belting out his laughter at the young boys, who stood there scowling, quite humiliated. Especially when the girls' gigglings joined the half-giants roars. Whenever Ron tried to yell out something insulting, it would come out as "I hope you fall, I hate you all!" Which only made them all laugh even more. It was dead depressing.

  


Harry was just glad he didn't have Transfiguration. He was quite certain that the girls had McGonagal on their side.

  


* * *

After what felt like waaaaay too long, the day was finally over and the boys were in bed. One or two of them, perhaps having drunk less of the potion, had already been able to say things out of rhyme (though still in rhythm). Fred and George, on the other hand, had stood up in the common room and belted out dirty limericks (they had praised Harry for his brilliance in the use of these) and rap lyrics until it was time for bed, ending on a really awful rendition of Queen's "We are the Champions." Hermione was quite pissed, as she was trying to study in there. She finally huffed off to her room, congratulating the twins on finally becoming more annoying than Lavender and Parvati. Harry shook his head, chuckling, and headed up to the fifth year boys' room. He sent out some notes to Draco, Terry, and Justin, calling a meeting together to discuss vengeance.


	3. Banshees and Hags and huh!

Harry thought back to the meeting he'd had last night with 24 other boys. One boy from each year of each house had been selected to complete this most sacred duty. Harry himself and the other three "House Representatives" had performed the ritual for their year. The results would become quite obvious the next morning.

  


It served them right, Harry supposed. After that trick with the Poetry Potion-- he shuddered to remember his own horrid rhyming --the girls had it coming. Only four days had passed since Harry and his fellows had woken up spouting out what sounded like a bad imitation of Shakespeare, and the very next day (after the potion had worn off, of course), he and his Comrades-in-Arms Draco, Justin, and Terry had planned an apt revenge.

Harry lay awake at 5:47am, contemplating the turn of events. Ron had remained his steadfast friend, but though he was good at knowing what level of prank would be good to match that of the girls', Ron was horrible at thinking up a good and more importantly doable antic. Ron's strategy was more of a "don't talk to them until they apologize-- or you need help with homework" sort of deal.

  


No, the only other boy in his year who matched Harry's skill at pranking was Harry's own arch-rival, Draco Malfoy. All in all, this wasn't terribly surprising. Any GOOD pair of enemies would have fairly matching skills, or else one would just crush the other and there wouldn't be any point to being an enemy, right? So it made sense that Draco was quite good at pranking. What he was horrible at-- as had been proven time and again by Harry himself --was not getting caught. Ironically enough, Harry easily beat out the Slytherin when it came to this. And it wasn't just because of his Invisibility Cloak and wide, innocent-looking eyes, either; Harry proved to be quite good at coming up with alibis and people to verify them.

He had discussed this once with Draco, actually. In a rare moment of camaraderie (and slight intoxication, as they'd sneaked to Hogsmeade and gotten their hands on a large supply of butterbeer), he spilled his true opinion to his rival.

  


"Sometimes I think..." (you must imagine his words being somewhat slurred, here) "...that...Gryffindors aren't really brave...they're just Slytherins who hide better." At this point he'd hiccupped and stumbled as he and Draco had made their way back to the castle, stumbling through the tiny passageway that went between the town of Hogsmeade and Hogwarts. "And, ya know, sometimes I think..."

  


This was as far as Harry could remember of that night. He'd woken up in his own bed, however, still fully dressed, so he assumed he'd fallen asleep and....well, he wasn't sure if Draco had actually carried him to bed, or had found someone else to do so, or what. He chose not to worry about it.

  


His intent in allowing himself to become inebriated with the silver-blonde Slytherin was to get the boy to open up, but all he'd really learned about Draco was that he was one of those silent, brooding drunks. Quite disappointing, really. Working with Draco on ideas for pranks, Harry found that when he wasn't being an obnoxious, spoiled, racist (for lack of a better word for it) bastard, Draco was quite entertaining. He also had a highly amusing dead-on impression of Severus Snape, which had Harry in stitches for twenty minutes of their precious planning time.

  


Harry was working to justify this sudden change in opinion when he heard a scream. Followed by several screams. Followed by a loud roar of what sounded like a herd of screaming girls.

  


Harry grinned and jumped out of bed and quickly woke Ron, Seamus, Dean, and Neville up.

  


"Showtime, boys!"

* * *

  


"HARRY FUCKING POTTER!" Hermione stood at the bottom of the stairs to the girls' dormitory, still wearing her tanktop-and-sweats pajamas, her face a furious scarlet. "WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?!" Without waiting for an answer, the calm, rational brunette jump-tackled her raven-haired best friend, who fell backwards onto the ground and nearly had the wind knocked out of him. Before he could gasp for breath, however, Hermione had put her hands around his throat, choking him. "WHAT DID YOU DO!?" she reiterated after a few moments, as Ron yanked her forcefully off of Harry, who gasped for breath.

  


"What are you talking about?" Fred popped into this room, flanked by his twin.

  


"Our REFLECTIONS!" Hermione shrieked. "They show...they show..."

  


"Show what?" George asked innocently. "Your lovely visage?"

  


"They show...they show monsters!" Lavender had stomped into the room. "I looked into the mirror and saw a god damn BANSH--" Parvati cut her off before she could finish.

  


"Consider yourself lucky, Lav! My reflection was a hag!" Parvati was horribly offended by this.

  


"Mine-- well, never mind, but tell us what the hell you did to us!" Hermione demanded, flushed red to match the decor of the common room.

  


"We transformed you into your true inner selves!" Seamus's Irish lilt broke into the conversation, quickly silenced as about ten girls-- they were all pouring into the common room at this point --threw pillows at them.

  


"You didn't tell us what you did to make us spout poetry, we figured it out on our own. So should you. What's the matter, Hermione, don't any of your books tell you anything?" Harry smirked as Hermione's eyes widened in fury. The smirk was rather a defense mechanism, however; Harry was slightly terrified of Hermione when she got this mad. The last time it had happened, Malfoy had been slapped quite badly-- had a slap mark for about a week. And there was that one time when she turned Ron's hand into a turtle (he'd been teasing her, as usual, and said that he bet she couldn't turn his watch into a turtle. She had 'missed'.) And Harry's throat had yet to forget the feeling her her hands stopping his air supply. Most fortunately, the tense moment ended, her eyes narrowed and she backed off. Harry was inwardly feeling relieved when Hermione finally spoke.

  


"Fine. We'll figure this out. And you'll be sorry!" At this point, she turned to the other girls. "Get dressed and meet me in the library. Parvati, alert the other houses. I assume they've been hit by this...this..thing too?" This last bit was directed at Harry, who allowed his smirk to grew into an evil grin in response.

  


The Gryffindor boys waited in the common room in complete silence. They waited for the girls to get dressed and waited as they all left through the portrait hole. They waited another ten seconds. And then they laughed. And laughed. And laughed.

  


Unfortunately, they laughed so long and so hard that they were still laughing when they arrived-- late --for Transfiguration. McGonagal gave them all detention. But it was worth it. Harry was certain that Hermione would figure the whole thing out. He just hoped that it wouldn't be for a couple of days. The girls were forced to go through their entire day makeup-less and without their usual meticulous hair styling for lack of mirrors. Even the mirrors in the prefects' bathrooms showed horrible monsters. Rumor had it that Pansy Parkinson actually saw herself in the mirror as she normally was. She was quite humiliated, as were all the other girls. Of course, even the girls' rather pathetic attempts to not be seen without their usual pound or two of makeup wasn't as funny as their initial reactions had been. Reports were the same throughout all the four houses: the girls had all thought they had actually been changed into the monsters. It took them five or ten minutes to calm down enough to notice that they looked perfectly normal when they looked down at themselves, and that all the other girls looked normal despite their reflections too.

  


Most of the girls were most eager to talk about what their reflections had been. They decided that the most attractive girls were being given the ugliest reflections, which was why Parvati saw a hag-- notoriously the ugliest female creature out there --while Pansy saw only herself. Only Hermione seemed to keep it a secret, and none of the other girls would tell it, clearly out of a newfound sense of gender loyalty. Even the chatty Lavender refused to divulge her roommate's secret, which caused Harry to wonder on it even more.

  


Hermione had spent the rest of the day locked in the library. She even skipped her classes, which was something she never did, to search feverishly for a cure for whatever hex, curse, or potion had been used on them. Harry had peeked in on her before going in to tell her that it was almost after hours and she needed to come back up to the dorm. She'd gotten permission from McGonagal to go through the Restricted section, and she was finding no spell or potion that could alter only a person's reflection.

  


Yes, this had been a brilliant plan, Harry thought to himself that night. Even under Veritaserum the boys would be able to say that they had done nothing to the girls directly. Yes, Draco's idea had turned out to be perfect. Harry had dreamed up the list that started the war, but it had been Draco's idea to hex all the girls' mirrors.


	4. A brief interlude

The boys had won. The girls had failed to prank them back after three whole weeks! Of course, it wasn't for lack of trying, but rather for an increased sense of caution. The boys had potion-tested their drinks and food at every meal. They kept track of all the females of the houses, to watch for meetings that might alert the boys to some activity on the part of their adversaries. Thanks to Justin's sudden blast of brilliance-- quite unusual for the popular but quite Hufflepuff --they had even found a spell to magic-proof the boys' dorm rooms. No magic could be performed in any of the boys' dorm rooms in any house. This meant that the boys had to do all their homework out of the dorm, but most of them did this anyway, so it was really quite convenient.

  


No, they were taken care of this time, Harry was certain. The girls had already tried a couple of pranks, and had failed miserably. They had tried using Confundus spells, to make the boys disoriented for the rest of the day, but of course they couldn't cast the spells. They had also tried getting a potion into the boys' drinks which would make them think they were some kind of pop star for a day-- an invention of Pansy Parkinson's, oddly enough. Fortunately the drinks had been tested and only Vincent Crabbe had taken a sip, and he ran around thinking he was Ringo Starr and singing "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" for the rest of the evening. It wore off after about an hour, since he hadn't taken the full dose.

  


After this event, three uneventful weeks had passed. 

  


Harry lay in his bed and grinned, glad that the battle was over and that-- yet again --he had been on the winning side. Of course, if he was honest with himself, he was a little sad to see the war end, as it had been a great deal of fun. Oh well, at least Hermione would help him with his homework again. That had been the worst part of the whole thing, Harry thought. The tension between the males and females at Hogwarts had been ridiculous. Even among the teachers! Professors Snape and Lupin (who was back teaching Defense against the Dark Arts and quite fond of Harry, in the same way Snape was fond of Draco) were always willing to give the boys any help for their pranks without asking questions. It was from Snape that Draco got the idea of enchanting the mirrors, actually. He had casually mentioned in class how talking mirrors were made with a certain type of potion, and Harry could have sworn he had winked at Draco. He shuddered to even think of it. Of course, the female professors had gotten in on the act as well. McGonagal and Trelawny of all people were the staunchest supporters, although Madame Hooch had also been a bit extra harsh on the boys in Quidditch, which put teams that had girls at an advantage over teams that didn't (i.e. Slytherin, who Gryffindor had beat, 220-10).

  


But it wasn't watching his professors argue that Harry liked best about the prank war. No, what he liked was the fact that for once, he got to work with people without the infamous House Pride getting in the way-- especially Draco. He'd learned more about Draco in the past month than he'd known in 4 years of going to school with the boy. Harry had always assumed that the boy was simply the black to his own white; a black hat, the boy who hates everyone and everything except himself. Oh, he never thought this consciously, he knew that Draco had to have something inside him, but he'd never really thought about it before. At this opportunity to work with the blonde Slytherin, Harry had found out that first off, he was really, really funny. He knew it was sort of hypocritical, but when he wasn't the one at the butt of Draco's jokes, they WERE a lot funnier. Draco was particularly good at impressions. He had good ones of all the teachers, even ones that Harry hadn't met before. During the late-night planning sessions, which usually involved only Draco and Harry, since Justin and Terry were no good at sneaking, it was all Harry could do to keep from laughing and blowing their cover at times.

  


Of course, it had taken a week or two for them to get used to the idea of working together. Draco would sneer, Harry would sneer back, Draco would say something scathing, Harry would respond. Or sometimes it would be the other way around. It made Harry feel guilty, knowing that he had started as many of their conflicts as Draco had. One particular argument stuck with him, from that first week when they were planning on the list. They'd been sitting in the library after hours, Harry writing the final (legible) copy of the list and Draco looking up the spell to make a bunch of copies of parchment.

  


* * *

  


Harry paused in his writing. "Biggest slut? Are you sure you want to have that category, Malfoy? I mean, you know girls take that differently than boys would. I mean, maybe you don't care if the girls hate you for the rest of your life, but some of us are straight." Harry hadn't meant to say that, though. He'd meant to stop after "girls take that differently than boys would," but something forced the rest of it out of him and (as if it wasn't bad enough), made him smirk, too.

  


Draco had widened his eyes briefly before narrowing them. "Maybe SOME of you are, Potter, but I'm fairly sure you're not one of them. But really, can't you think of anything more witty to call me than queer? Homosexuality jokes are so first year!" Harry had flushed. Malfoy was right. He hated it when Malfoy was right. It was really juvenile and he'd had no reason to say it anyway. He was about to apologize, but Draco cut him off. "Though it would be kind of funny, you know. The Boy who Lived an Alternate Lifestyle, hmm?"

  


Harry couldn't help but chuckle (he just wished his chuckle didn't sound so damn much like a giggle). He figured if he wasn't going to be allowed to apologize, then he'd let Malfoy's insult slide. "More like the Boy who Lived a Crappy Lifestyle," he muttered as he finished off the list with Hermione's name (that vote had surprised him, but he supposed that if there was any girl whose style in bed was unknown, it would be Hermione's).

  


At this, though, Malfoy had slammed his book shut. Loudly. Harry winced at the sound and looked around to see if Filch was coming, but before he had time to be relieved, Malfoy was hissing at him. "Oh yes, poor Potter with his horrid muggle relatives and his stupid bloody scar that hurts, poor paparazzi-chased pet Potter with the wizarding world at his bloody stupid feet!" Malfoy paused and breathed deeply, staring straight down at the closed book, "Spells for Busy Businesses." Harry sat deathly still for what felt like hours, too scared to move, too worried about hurting this blonde boy in front of him to say anything. Finally, Draco's body relaxed and he gathered his things. He turned to leave the library. Harry grabbed the sleeve of his robe, beginning to apologize again, but Draco yanked his arm away. Without looking back, the Slytherin said quietly, "You may think it's difficult growing up and being expected to save the world as we know it, Potter...but let me tell you that it's worse being expected to destroy it."

  


With that, Draco Malfoy left the library.

  


* * *

Harry caught up with him the next day, under the pretense of giving him the list to be copied (since they'd left the library before completing that task). He apologized profusely. Draco was taken aback, thanked him after a pause, took the list, and left. They'd never broached the topic of that evening, and they didn't stop fighting exactly, but their battles never escalated above insult-throwing after that. And after a fashion, the boys had become friends. Even Ron admitted that, when he wasn't working for the glory of the Slytherin house or the defamation of Gryffindor (which amounts to the same thing), Draco wasn't so bad.

  


For as long as the battle continued, Harry could call Draco his friend, and for that he was glad. With this conclusion reached, Harry rolled over and went to sleep.

  


* * *

  


Harry awoke that morning to the sounds of Ron yelling something from the bathroom. Sitting up in bed, Harry noticed that he'd slept in. Class was starting in twenty minutes-- no time for breakfast. Cursing to himself, Harry got up and saw that Neville was also still asleep. Had his alarm not gone off, too? That was unusual. Harry woke the forgetful boy up and started walking to the boys' bathroom for a quick shower, but Seamus grabbed his arm before he could open the door.

  


"I wouldn't go in there, mate, it's NOT a pretty sight." Seamus's face looked so grim that Harry started to feel panicked.

  


"What happened? Did someone die or something? Did Vol--"

  


"No, no, nothing like THAT. Geez. The girls came in and turned off all our alarms, AND the hot water, AND they stole our towels! So in other words, if you go into the showers, you'll see Ron and Dean completely naked right after taking a cold shower. Not that it wouldn't be a funny sight or anything-- if it was up to me I'd go in and take pictures --but Ron would never forgive us."

  


Suddenly Neville squeaked. "They took our robes too! The only robes left in here are dress robes!"

  


Harry groaned. Damn women. Damn them all. 


	5. What DO they wear under their robes

Hermione Granger was smart. Harry knew this. She knew every spell in every book they'd ever been assigned to read, and the spells out of a lot of books they HADN'T been assigned (or weren't even allowed to read, for that matter). She was also disturbingly good at Potions-- second only to Draco, in fact, and even that was mostly due to Snape's interference --and could even invent a few of her own potions. She was even starting to learn how to create spells on her own. In other words, Hermione was an utter genius with magic.  
  
Which was probably why it hadn't occurred to Harry or any of the other boys that they might try and retaliate in such a non-magical way. It wasn't even just non-magical, it was...simple. Childish. Obvious.   
  
It was no big deal. Sure, some boys in each year of each house had made the startling discovery that there was no hot water or towels, and had to endure the taunting of their roommates-- especially about certain body parts --and of course, they had to wear their dress robes to class (which was technically not against the rules, so long as they met a certain bunch of requirements.) But most of the boys got away with relatively little problem, aside from the embarassment of having been taken in such a muggle fashion.  
  
Unfortunately, Harry found that his dress robes were not in his closet. In fact, the only clothing in his trunk wasn't his at all-- black leather pants, a black t-shirt with the sleeves and collar ripped off, and black combat boots.  
  
Harry was considering wearing his pajamas and slippers to class. After all, none of the other boys could loan him anything, and they were the only other thing they had. However, Ron, in a rare moment of true intelligence, pointed out that it would probably be better to go wearing the clothes the girls (they assumed) had provided and hold his head high and unembarassed than to run around in his jammies. Harry sighed. Time to take a hit for the good of the group, he supposed. He pulled on the pants and boots, but when he picked up the t-shirt a few things fell on the ground. A spikey collar and matching bracelets. Armlets, he amended to himself. Bracelets sounded much too girly to describe these things. Well, he figured, better go all the way then. He put on the collar and bracelets.  
  
Ron gaped at him.  
  
"Do I look that stupid?" Harry raised a brow in anxiousness as he glanced at Ron's startled expression.  
  
"Harry...I wouldn't worry." Ron's 'O' mouth turned into a grin. "You look good." Harry raised his other brow, this time in astonishment.  
  
"You've GOT to be kidding me." Ron just shook his head.  
  
"I don't think the girls were just trying to embarass you, mate. I think they actually wanted to see you in leather!" Harry flushed red and glanced at himself in the mirror. His pale skin accented the blackness of the clothes quite nicely, he supposed. Shame the shirt wasn't green. Would have brought out his eyes. Mrs. Weasley would've been happy then. Harry sighed.  
  
"Well...let's go then."  
As soon as he got to breakfast, Harry noticed the stares he was getting. Remembering Ron's words, he gave the room a cheeky grin and sat down at his usual place, determined not to let Hermione's prank get the best of him.  
  
Then Draco stormed in. Dressed identically to Harry. He looked good. By some magic, Harry kept his jaw from dropping, but failed in being as discreet with his eyes (which, Ron told him later, had nearly bugged out of their sockets). Harry was pleased to notice Draco returning his incredulous stares. And everyone else was staring at them, too. Fortunately, the morning owls swooped into the room, distracting everyone. Hedwig landed on Harry's shoulder and dropped him a brief note of the usual updates and warnings from Sirius. Harry ripped off a piece of the parchment and scrawled a note onto it.  
D -  
Meet at midnight in the library.  
Bring Terry and Justin.  
Payback.  
- H  
He handed the note to Hedwig and quietly told her to get it to Draco after everyone else had left the common room. She nipped his ear affectionately-- fortunately, the owls weren't taking part in the current war at Hogwarts.  
  
Draco threw a wad of paper at Harry in Potions in response.  
H-  
Damn right.  
- D  
Harry grinned. Vengeance would be lovely.  
  
* * *  
Two weeks passed before the boys' revenge could be taken. One of these weeks was spent choosing a fitting revenge. The next week was spent designing it and learning the spell. But oh, it would be worth it.  
  
It had better be, Harry thought bitterly. The girls had spent ever moment of the two weeks bragging and rubbing their noses into their loss. If they thought that the taunting about their, er, masculine bits from their roommates was bad, it was nothing to what the girls were saying. Talk about ego-stomping. But this revenge would be quite appropriate. Or rather, it would be appropriately inappropriate.  
  
Each of the four "House Representatives" cast an x-ray vision spell on themselves. The girls wouldn't expect that-- they'd expect a prank or spell to be placed on them. They wouldn't even think of spell-proofing the boys. The spell would last for about a day, and they could turn it off and on at will by reiterating the words of the spell: Perspicuus.  
  
The intention was essentially quite juvenile: to see the girls' knickers (fourth-years and above only, of course). Draco had been rather against the idea at first, but when Harry pointed out to him that they weren't doing it for voyeuristic reasons, but rather for the purpose of mocking each girl individually about their choice of undies.  
  
"It's simple really," Harry grinned. "If she's wearing grannies, tease her for an old maid. If she's wearing a g-string or a thong, tease her for a slut."  
  
Draco raised an elegant eyebrow at this. "What if that's not what they're wearing?"  
  
Harry's grin faltered slightly. "What's left?"  
  
Draco's trademark smirked appeared. "Well...some girls prefer to be more, ah, enthusiastic in their undergarment choices. And of course, some," his smirk widened, "prefer not to wear any at all."  
  
Harry gaped for a moment, but he didn't feel embarassed as Justin Fitch-Fletchley had actually let out a gasp at this information. Come ON, Justin, it isn't THAT surprising a concept, he heard a voice which sounded remarkably like Draco's in his head.  
  
Then he realized that as soon as he'd heard the thought in his head, Draco had said it out loud. Harry nearly burst out laughing at that.  
  
"Well, at least now you won't humiliate our sex by fainting with surprise when you see it come Monday," Draco finally forced himself to stop chuckling at the naivete of the Hufflepuff. "That would absolutely ruin everything!"  
  
* * *  
Monday was the best day ever.  
  
The boys had decided to spend the day writing down the girls' panty choices, and then got together for a meeting to write disparaging comments about each and every choice. And Draco had been proven correct, quite a few girls turned out to be wearing satin teddies, negligees, or, well, nothing under their robes and uniforms. Oddly enough, Hermione was a member of the latter group. Harry had nearly choked on his pumpkin juice, causing her to look at him oddly as she sat across from him at the table (the boys and girls were still sitting on opposite sides of the tables). Parvati was wearing granny panties, to Harry's surprise (he'd figured she was more the thong type), and Lavender was wearing the most complex-looking getup he'd ever seen. Pansy, it turned out, liked pink. A lot. Draco was disgusted.  
  
Justin complained to them in the middle of the day that he kept getting aroused watching the girls in their underoos. Harry told him that whenever that happened, to just look at whatever teacher was nearby. Especially McGonagal (who, it turned out, had a thing for leather. Ew.)  
  
The next morning, before anyone had woken up, they posted the lists in the common rooms.  
  
Hermione took one look at the list and fainted when she saw what was scrawled next to her name. Colin, who Harry had told to take pictures of the girls' reactions, managed to get an excellent shot of her falling backwards. Lavender Brown, predictably, took down the lists and threw them in the fireplace. It was at this point that Harry set off the spell that caused copies of the list to rain down in the Gryffindor dormitories. He grinned and made sure to keep a copy of it for himself. He also told Colin to make copies of all the photos he took. Harry had decided to make a scrapbook of this war.  
  
Yes, overall, he was glad it hadn't really been over. He made plans to meet with Draco, Justin, and Terry to discuss what the girls might plan next. 


	6. Taking it Too Far?

Harry Potter had very nice breasts.  
  
...Just how he had them, unfortunately, was another matter entirely. A girlish voice shrieked and jumped out of his mouth, yelling only one thing: "HERMIONEEEEEEEEE!"  
  
Harry cursed his female friend. Or her female friend. He decided to stick with the male pronouns, just for simplicity. So, Harry cursed his female friend. More like ex-friend, he thought. He instantly understood the repercussions of Hermione's (and the other girls') actions. They had brought the Prank War of the Sexes to a whole new level with this one. Turning all the boys of Hogwarts into girls? How cruel could they BE?! Harry looked around at the other people in his room. They weren't awake yet. Against his will, Harry laughed as he thought of what Ron's reaction would be. He ran over and woke Ron up, who (sure enough) had acquired a rather nice rack. He shook Ron's shoulder to wake him up. "Ron. Ron? RON!"  
  
Ron sat up. "Hermione? 'zzat you?" The redhead sat up slowly, blinked a couple of times, and looked at Harry. "Harry? What's wrong?"  
  
Harry blinked at Ron for a second. "You mean you can't tell?" Harry wondered if there was more to this spell than he'd thought.  
  
"Tell WHAT? You look perfectly--perfect--perf..." Ron trailed off as he suddenly noticed his companion's sudden additions on his chest. "Holy SHIT!" Suddenly Ron seemed to hear his own voice. "OH MY GOD!" Ron's hands found their way under his covers. "WHERE'S MY--"  
  
"Stop SHOUTING! You'll wake the others up! The girls must have turned us into...into...well, girls!" Harry hissed at his best friend.  
  
Ron was now eyeing Harry. "You know...don't kill me for saying this...but you don't look very different. Just the ti--" He was cut off as Harry grabbed Ron's pillow and smacked him with it.  
  
"Don't even say it, Ronita."  
  
"What the hell are GIRLS doing in our DORMITORY?" Dean sat up and blinked. "Who the hell are you? Where's Ron and Harry?"  
  
"Dean!" Harry rushed over and looked him over. "You're...you're...you're a guy."  
  
Dean looked at the pretty black-haired girl whose tanktop was slipping down off one shoulder. "Err...yes?" He looked closer at the green eyes of the strange girl. "...HARRY!?"  
  
"Yes! Ron's been changed too! Why haven't you? Did they miss?" Harry started rushing to Neville's and Seamus's beds, who both yelped in fright as their blankets were pulled up and their chests inspected. Better chests than, er, other parts, Harry figured.  
  
Ten minutes later, Neville, Seamus, and Dean had been filled in on the fact that two of the Gryffindor fifth-year boys were now girls. It took that long because Neville was panicking and trying to find some decent clothes.  
  
"But why only us?" Harry pondered out loud. "If it was just me it would make sense, since I'm the house representative...but why Ron?"  
  
"Isn't it obvious, Harry?" Seamus smirked. "Think about who's in charge of the girls."  
  
Ron groaned. "Hermione's mad at me, isn't she?"  
  
* * *  
As it turned out, this seemed true. Only Harry, Justin, Terry, Draco, and Ron had been changed into girls. They wore their regular uniforms, very glad that the grey sweaters covered up their now bulging white button-up shirts. Seamus had suggested that they go to the girls to borrow bras, but Harry outright refused to give them the pleasure. It again appeared that the girls were using a potion, and again Draco was sent to ask Snape about a cure or how long its effects would last. This time the other boys went with him, anxious to discover their fates.  
  
After Snape got up off the floor where he'd spent a few minutes laughing, he announced that he did have a cure for a gender-switching potion. Relieved, the boys waited as he doled out five goblets of a blue potion, which they drank.  
  
It didn't work.  
  
Snape, to say the least, was very surprised. "But...if they didn't use this gender-switching potion...then they must have invented their own!"  
  
Ron and Harry groaned "Hermione," and at the same time Draco uttered the name "Pansy." Harry and Ron turned to Draco, surprised.  
  
Draco lifted an eyebrow. "Pansy has a particular knack for creating potion recipes, though she she's no great shakes at the practical application of the potion. With her potion-creating, and Hermione's potion-brewing...they could have easily created and used something new!"  
  
"So true, Mister Malfoy..." Snape sighed. "I suppose I'll have to give you access to my private stores to work out a cure, as we have no idea how long the effects will last." Draco's eyes lit up at the idea of having access to all of Snape's stuff. "However, I absolutely refuse to let Potter in," Snape continued with a nasty gleam in his eye. "He's made his way into my stores before, and I'm certainly not letting him in now. If you need an assistant, you can bring Boot in with you. But no one else!" Snape's tone had turned warning at this last bit, his eye intently on Draco's smirk.  
  
"Of course, sir." A slightly triumphant glint was in Draco's eye as he glanced at Harry. "Boot would probably be a more useful assistant anyway."  
  
Harry refused to retaliate in front of Professor Snape. Now was NOT the time to be starting petty arguments, he thought.  
  
But as he left the room, he found himself staring at Terry rather jealously. Jealously? Why jealous? That's silly, he told himself. No more of that!  
  
* * *  
It had been three days. Three days since Harry and Ron had woken up with breasts and, well, other things. Hermione refused to tell anyone-- even the other girls --exactly what she had done to the five boys. Some of the girls were worried that the boys would try and start using the girls' bathrooms-- or worse, the girls changing rooms --as revenge, but when Ron brought up the possibility, Harry said no, Hermione probably already thought of that and has some way around it. "No, we'll get them back--but let's get us back first," he said. His voice brooked no arguments. Or at least he thought it didn't, because Ron hadn't argued.  
  
It had been a rough three days. It took one entire day to convince Neville that just because their bodies had changed, their minds hadn't, and so it was okay for Neville to continue changing and showering with them. Unfortunately, Seamus had the opposite problem. The first time Ron and Harry tried showering, he sneaked in and tried to grope them. Ron, in sheer panic, had punched him, and he ended up with a black eye. But, Seamus being Seamus, the Irish boy remained quite cheerful about the whole thing. Said it was what he deserved. And it hadn't stopped him from grabbing Harry's ass every time they passed in the halls.  
  
Dean just treated Harry and Ron exactly the same as he had when they were male. Which was very fair of Dean, and therefore very typical.  
  
Harry found that while Terry, Justin, and Ron didn't make terribly attractive females, Draco looked quite all right as one. Draco had grown his hair out over the summer and was wearing it in a loose ponytail anyway, so he was the only one of the five new "girls" to have standard female long hair. His features were already quite effeminate, and his smirk had the same power as a boy or a girl. His chest was smaller than Ron's or Justin's, it was actually closer to Harry's size. But that made sense, as Harry and Draco had always been close to the same size. As such, it was hardly noticable that Gryffindor's Golden Boy and Slytherin's Silver Prince were now a Girl and a Princess, respectively. Except when they opened their mouths and spoke, of course.  
  
By dinner of the third night, Harry had grown used to the awkward stares of his male year-mates and house-mates, and had even found a couple of advantages to being female.  
  
"I'll say one thing for being a girl," he said quietly to Ron and the other House Representatives (who had decided to sit together to discuss their little problem), "and that is that I smell a lot better now." The other boys-turned-girls had burst out laughing at this, except for Draco, naturally.  
  
"I'll have you know, Potter, that I smell quite good no matter what genitals I have!" he sniffed disdainfully.  
  
"You sound like you've been a girl before, Malfoy," Harry retorted with an easy grin. He loved how he and Draco could taunt each other in a more friendly, open manner now. It was more like taunting Ron had always been.  
  
Draco smirked. "Who says I haven't? Polyjuice Potion is interesting stuff..." Harry's eyebrow raised. He had never told Draco that he and Ron had sneaked into the Slytherin common room using polyjuice potion to disguise as Crabbe and Goyle their second year. Mostly because he didn't want to confess that he'd thought Draco was the Heir of Slytherin and trying to kill off the other students. That wouldn't be a lovely scene. He wondered when Draco had ever used Polyjuice potion.  
  
"I used it once my third year. Turned myself into Granger." Draco's smirk widened into an evil grin. "I was hoping you would lay some secrets in my lap." At this, the grin faded. "But as it turned out, you weren't on speaking terms at the time."   
  
Ron would have started to berate Draco for his attempt at subterfuge, but Harry quelled him with a look. "Third year was rough," he commented, and it was left at that.  
  
* * *  
Harry woke up in the morning and knew something was different. His immediate reaction was minor panic-- Voldemort? Death Eaters? A pause as he listened. Definitely not. The girls, then? Another pause, a little longer. No. The black-haired boy cautiously made his way from bed to the bathroom. He had been at the urinal for about ten seconds when he realized what he was doing.  
  
"My....I've got...RON!" Harry finished up quickly and ran back into the dorm, making his way to Ron's four-poster. "RON! It wore off! We're boys again!"  
  
Ron sat up, squealing out "THE CHEESE!" and clinging to his blanket. He glanced at Harry. "Huh?"  
  
"We're boys again, Ron!" Ron gaped and felt around under his blankets again. His face fell.  
  
"No...no I'm not. What on earth? Why did YOU change back!?" Ron glared at Harry accusingly. "Did dear old Draco give you the antidote and not me?!"  
  
"What? No! I don't know what happened! I'll owl Draco right now!" Harry did. By this time, of course, his roommates had woken up (quite irritably), and were pondering over Harry's return to his normal state.  
  
Draco wrote that he was still quite female, and so was Terry. He hadn't contacted Justin yet. Harry's brow furrowed, and he sat like that for some time. Then an inkling of suspicion trickled into his head. "It can't be..."  
  
Ron tackled Harry. "What? WHAT DO YOU KNOW?!?!"  
  
"RON! GET OFF!" Harry flushed red as Ron's bosoms (only barely covered by Ron's now bulging pajama top) flew into his face. "Jesus! I think I know what they did! I know why Draco couldn't find an antidote to the potion! They didn't USE a potion!"  
  
Ron sat back. "Whaaaa?"  
  
"They wouldn't need to. Remember in Transfiguration earlier in the term, a couple of months ago, when we studied conditional Transfiguration? Like, making someone have to do something in order to turn back? What if the girls used something like that?!"  
  
"But...but that's REALLY difficult stuff!" Ron gaped. "Even Hermione isn't THAT good!"  
  
"Maybe not..." Harry's voice was grim. "But they've got McGonagal on their side."  
  
* * *  
At breakfast it turned out that Justin had turned back, too. The three former-boys-now-girls and the two former-girls-now-boys-again immediately sat together quietly discussing what could have happened. The connection was finally made.  
  
"Justin...Justin!" Terry sat up straight. "Last night, before we separated and went to our dorms, didn't you say you were much more graceful as a girl than as a guy?"  
  
Justin blinked rather stupidly. "Yeah? So?"  
  
"And Harry!" Terry was grinning triumphantly now. "You said that girls smell better than guys!"  
  
Things started to click in Harry's mind. "So the condition...is that we have to...appreciate something about girls? That's fucking brilliant! I hate it when she's good like that," Harry muttered this last bit mostly to himself.  
  
Ron groaned in despair. "Something tells me that saying I appreciate breasts won't exactly suffice." 


	7. The Ultimate Prank

The stakes had been raised. The risks were higher now. The last prank had been disastrous, even if it had only been played on five boys.

  


After Harry and Justin had stumbled upon the method to returning back to manhood (and what a relief THAT was), Draco, Terry, and Ron followed.

  


Draco found that women's bodies were much softer and nicer to touch.

  


Terry decided that girls' minds were more apt to studying lots of different subjects.

  


Ron (after almost a week) finally admitted in a whisper to Harry that females had much more pleasant voices to listen to than males.

  


He then proceeded to remind Harry to meet with Draco and Terry and Justin as fast as possible to plan a suitable revenge. Before it was all battles, but this time, he said, it has to be war.

  


"Come on, Harry. This has been going on for a couple of months now. It's time to end it once and for all." 

  


Harry knew that Ron was right. But he couldn't bring himself to explain that if the war ended, then he'd probably have to give up most of his friendship with Justin, Terry, and especially Draco. Oddly enough, Harry almost couldn't imagine going back to life as before, he simply didn't have the heart to hate Draco anymore. Especially after the scene in the library. Draco's words haunted Harry.

  


"You may think it's difficult growing up and being expected to save the world as we know it, Potter...but let me tell you that it's worse being expected to destroy it."

  


The more Harry thought about it, the more he realized that he and Draco had more in common than they'd ever admit. On the outside, they were exact opposites: Draco was cool and confident, sneering, condescending, spoiled, and a lone wolf. Harry was a bit on the reserved side and was unfailingly polite to everybody (except Malfoy and occasionally Snape), had grown up with little or no money spent on him, and had two of the best friends he thought anyone ever COULD have.

  


But underneath all that...Harry had grown up with a family who was ashamed of him. From what little Draco had let slip about his family life, it was much the same. So long as Draco didn't embarrass the family, he could do as he pleased. It wasn't exactly the same, but the similarities of the two loveless families were unmistakable.

  


At the age of eleven, Harry was finally opened up to a world he was expected to save. No one thought twice about expecting this of Harry, either. As far as they were concerned, he'd done it once, he could do it again. Harry still had a lot of trouble living up to the idea. Draco had spent a childhood almost as isolated as Harry's in terms of contact with anyone who didn't live in or frequently visit Malfoy Manor. While having access to the magical world, he still had no idea exactly how far-reaching his family's reputation would be. As soon as he got to Diagon Alley he observed the strange looks he and his father received. By the time he reached Hogwarts and was sorted, he knew he'd been branded a dark wizard by everyone-- including Harry Potter. He would never admit it, Harry knew, but Draco had been extremely hurt by Harry's rejection of his offer of friendship. Harry couldn't help wondering what would have happened if he'd acccepted Draco's hand. Perhaps they would have been friends for five years now, instead of a handful of months. Perhaps Draco would have been put into Gryffindor.

  


Or, a nagging voice in th back of Harry's mind said, perhaps you would have been put into Slytherin.

  


Harry decided to stop worrying about Draco and to focus on the task at hand: the Ultimate Prank.

  


Harry called a meeting with the other house representatives. "Okay guys, we have to think of something big here. Let's get straight to it. What is the number one thing girls are sensitive about?"

  


Justin immediately said, "being fat. We could give them engorgement potions!" Draco snorted.

  


"Don't be ridiculous. First off, those are ridiculously easy to get antidotes for. Second off, they wouldn't care that much. We need something a bit more....permanent."

  


"Any ideas, then?" Harry glanced at Draco, who remained silent. "Terry? How about you?"

  


"Well...they always seem to think secret crushes are a big deal. Maybe something about crushes? Find out their crushes and post them?"

  


"That's not permanent." Draco's drawl cut in again. "Crushes are fleeting. They'd be embarassed for a short while, perhaps...but they'd get over it."

  


"Draco's right," Harry started. "But I can't help wondering if Terry hasn't got something there...maybe instead of focusing on the crush part, we should just focus on the secret part. Find out each girls' hidden secret and post that?"

  


"Brilliant!" Justin laughed. "Ruddy brilliant!"

  


Draco gave Harry a pointed glance. "You want them to surrender this time, right? That'll hurt them, definitely, but it won't make them surrender."

  


"Good point..." Harry sat down in an armchair and sighed.

  


"But...that doesn't mean we couldn't use it." Draco stood and began pacing. "If we could find out their deepest darkest secrets....we could tell them that they have to surrender, or THEN we'll post their secrets!"

  


"Brilliant!" Justin jumped up. "Ruddy BRILLIANT!"

  


Harry eyed Justin for a moment. "Well...we can't just have the four of us collecting all the secrets, can we? First off, we'd never remember them all, and if we wrote them down, the girls could find the papers and destroy them..."

  


"We'd have to collect all the guys and make sure each guy gets the secret from each girl," Draco sat on the table.

  


"And we could use Veritaserum to get the secrets from them!" Terry grinned.

  


"Brilliant! Ruddy br--"

  


"STUPEFY!"

  


Justin slumped over in his chair, asleep. Draco set down his wand. "Sorry, but he was REALLY starting to get on my nerves."

  


Harry and Terry paused. "...Right then," Harry decided to just move on. Besides, Justin bugged him, too. "We'll have to mobilize all the guys. And we'll have to do it at the same time, or the girls will realize what's going on. I guess dinner would be the best time to do it...but...how did the girls get the poetry potion into all the boys' goblets?"

  


Draco glanced at Harry. "You know...I still have some Polyjuice potion. You could disguise myself as that Patil girl, or Brown, and talk to Granger about it..."

  


"Me?! Why me? Why not YOU?"

  


"YOU know the Gryffindor passwords and everything! No one would suspect you!"

  


"I ruddy well think they'd suspect me if Parvati or Lavender was acting weird and I was nowhere to be found!"

  


"Damn. Good point."

  


"Besides, you can think of it as infiltrating the Gryffindor lair." This brought a grin to Draco's face.

  


"Too true..."

  


The boys jumped as they heard a loud snore. Then they realized it was just Justin. "...ruddy...brill'nt..."

  


* * *

  


Harry's second experience with Polyjuice potion went even better than the first, and he remembered how amazed he had been about how smoothly their sneaking into the Slytherin common room had went, even keeping the end (when they'd run out with Harry's scar and Ron's red hair sneaking back into place).

  


Draco, apparently, could play the girly-girl part astonishingly well. No one suspected that Parvati was actually lying on a table in an abandoned classroom with Harry's Invisibility Cloak over her and Justin and Terry keeping watch.

  


Harry had the easiest time of it; he just had to sit in the common room, listening for Draco to say "So Hermione, tell me how Viktor Krum is doing!" They had chosen this as a code phrase for "GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, NOW."

  


But he never heard the phrase. Draco-Parvati came out of the girls' room, winked discreetly at Harry, and left the tower. No one even looked up as he-she walked by.

  


Harry waited for twenty minutes before heading to the library to meet with the representatives.

  


"Well?" Harry sat at their usual table, across from Draco. "How'd they do it?"

  


"Why didn't you tell me you'd made friends with Dobby, Potter?" Draco said reprovingly to Harry. "You know he was my old house elf. I'm surprised he's still alive...I figured Father had killed him." There was a very, very faint note of sadness in Draco's voice, but only Harry seemed to notice.

  


"Ah, well, I didn't think about it, I guess. I wasn't on friendly terms with you when I tricked your dad into freeing him--"

  


"You WHAT my dad?!" Draco jumped up, yelling and whispering at the same time. Harry paused a brief moment to be surprised that this was possible before repeating himself.

  


"I...tricked your father into freeing him. It was at the end of second year. Stuck his--err, his book in a sock and handed it to him. He threw the sock at Dobby without even realizing what he was doing..."

  


Draco flopped back into his chair. "You tricked my dad..you actually tricked my dad! I didn't even realize it was possible!"

  


Harry shifted uncomfortably. "Well, anyway...so Hermione used Dobby to administer the poetry potion, then?"

  


"Not only that, she told him that YOU wanted her to do it. I didn't know Granger had it in her." Draco smirked. "It only helped that the boys and the girls were sitting on opposite sides. They just had to make sure they knew which sides the girls were sitting on...and it's been fairly constant."

  


"That's wicked! This'll be too easy! Get Dobby to put a dose of Veritaserum in the goblets, send up sparks or something to tell the guys when to ask-- halfway through dinner at least, when the girls are all still there and they'll likely have drunk the stuff --and then each guy only has to remember one girls' secret! Then I'll tell Hermione that if they don't surrender, we'll write their secrets into a list and post them all over the school! And if they DO surrender...each guy will only know one secret, and they can't go around putting memory charms on EVERY guy or anything like that...it's perfect!"

  


Draco cleared his throat to break into Harry's rambling. "Err, there is...one problem."

  


Terry glanced worriedly at Draco. "Which is...?"

  


Draco sighed. "It'll take at least a month and a half to make up enough Veritaserum for all the girls in Hogwarts."

  


The boys were silent for a few minutes.

  


"Well...I say it's worth it. Besides, that means they'll be expecting it even less," Harry said, determination oozing from his voice.

  


Justin, ever ready to support a friend, stood and announced that he agreed.

  


"Well...better late than never. And if it works..." Terry also stood.

  


Draco paused for a minute. 

  


"Well....okay. Potter, you're in charge of getting ingredients that we can't or don't need to get from Snape's stores, as well as in charge of talking to Dobby and telling all the other guys about it. And MAKE SURE THEY KEEP IT QUIET. Boot, you'll help me brew the stuff. Fitch-Fletchley..." Justin looked up, eager to take part. Draco smirked. "Just keep quiet." Justin's face fell in time to Draco's grin forming.

  


Harry nudged Justin. "You can help me gather the ingredients and talk to the guys." Justin smiled.

  


The meeting thus adjourned, the boys went to their separate rooms. Harry sighed. "A month and a half. That's all I have left..."


	8. A Real Chapter

Five and a half weeks had gone by without incident. Draco and Terry managed somehow to continue brewing large amounts of Truth serum without getting caught. Though he somewhat suspected that this had to do with Draco's relationship with Snape, he decided not to ask how or where they managed to brew the stuff.   
  
The girls were nearly unbearable. Even more condescending than they usually were (and with Hermione, that was really saying a lot), they acted as though they pitied the boys for their loss. Much as it irked Harry to do so, the boys managed to pretend that they had lost and weren't planning anything. It helped that the House Representatives hadn't told any of their housemates the details of their plan yet; they thought it would be safer to wait until it could actually be hatched.   
  
Glad though he was to think that the war might be over soon, Harry couldn't help feeling a bit ill at ease about ending his tentative friendship with Draco. It made his insides squirm to think about going back to their usual squabbling and bickering. It made his insides squirm even more when he wondered what Draco would say on the subject. What if he didn't care at all? Slytherins are known for befriending people until their use runs out, and once the war was over, Harry would probably not be useful.   
  
Most people had accepted the temporary truce between houses. This lead to the least competitive Quidditch matches in the history of Hogwarts, and while Gryffindor did win the Quidditch cup again, they only beat Slytherin by five points even with the Snitch points, on account of their new chaser. Neither team was seen bragging at the others about this fact, however. When people realized that a truce between Slytherin and Gryffindor meant a truce between Harry and Draco, they were a little more inclined to complain. After all, the two boys' antics often made great entertainment to the Hufflepuffs and the Ravenclaws, and some of the Gryffindors and Slytherins too. Some people were utterly against the idea of Harry working with the young blonde and told him so. In the only sentence Ginny uttered to him that entire year, she told him that he'd better watch his back, because the female half of Hogwarts wanted his blood and he'd chosen to work with Malfoy, of all people. As far as she was concerned, it was a suicide move. She wasn't the only one to think this, either.   
  
Harry had been curious enough to ask Draco what he went through with his House mates about their "alliance" (friendship had seemed to strong a word at the time). He was surprised when Draco told him, "You forget, Potter, that as Slytherins we ally with whoever is most likely to be the most useful at any given moment. We typically don't worry about who the person is socially, so long as they're beneficial in the long run. Most of them approve whole-heartedly, because they can't deny that you're good with pranks, and you started the whole thing after all. So if they don't approve, then they're idiots for not thinking about the benefits of such an alliance. Besides, I'm Draco Malfoy, and they don't fuck with me."   
  
As Harry had watched over the next batch of weeks, he realized that this was true. While only Crabbe and Goyle seemed to be so utterly devoted to Draco, the rest of the Slytherins _did _seem to bend to his will in all matters.   
  
Harry soon found himself thinking things he never would have thought a few years ago. He decided he was immensely jealous of the Ravenclaw house, not because Cho Chang was there, but because they seemed to be the only house that had no enemies. Gryffindor and Hufflepuff were always fighting with Slytherin, but a Ravenclaw could have friends in any house if they so desired. The Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Slytherins all respected their counterpart's intelligence, and Harry rather suspected that part of the reason that no Houses fought with Ravenclaw was because a lot of people in every house went to its house members for help with their homework.   
  
Harry also thought back on his first year and decided that Dumbledore hadn't really been fair with the Slytherins at the end of the year, when he'd given Gryffindor just enough points to win the House cup after all the points had been tallied and Slytherin had won. The points were well-deserved, of course, but the more he looked on it from the perspective of someone in Slytherin, the more appalled he was by the favoritism showed and unnoticed by so many. No wonder Snape tried to even things out with his blatant bias. Harry wondered how Dumbledore, who seemed to see and know everything, could miss something like that.   
  
Harry also tried to find excuses to talk to Draco as much as possible. Harry would catch him in the library and say, "some group of boys say they don't want to wait for the you-know-what anymore, what should I tell them?" Or the raven-haired boy would connive to partner him in Potions or Care of Magical Creatures. And sometimes he would just say, "Hey Draco," (or Malfoy, depending on his mood) "wanna go to the kitchens for a snack?" He had learned not to feel hurt if Draco just said no, with no explanations, but felt elated whenever he said yes.   
  
Though Harry never tried to get Draco drunk again, he still prodded him with questions whenever he felt that his blonde rival was amiable enough to answer them. He found out that Draco hated being a seeker and wished he could be keeper. That life in Malfoy Manor was boring at best, which was interesting as Harry had always imagined the place to be bustling with Death Eater business (he didn't say that out loud, of course). That Draco was secretly glad Buckbeak had escaped in third year-- the guilt had been getting to him pretty badly.   
  
Harry paid dearly for this info, though. Draco was now aware of the Invisibility Cloak, of the Marauder's Map, of the Polyjuice potion in their second year, and that Harry still had nightmares about Cedric's death.   
  
It was during one of these question-and-answer sessions, however, that Harry blurted out what was really on his mind. "Malfoy, what are we going to do when this war thing is over?"   
  
Draco blinked at him for a second. "Do?"   
  
Harry blanched slightly, but decided that he might as well go through with the questioning. "I mean...well, about our alliance. I mean..."   
  
Draco raised one elegant eyebrow. "Spit it out, Potter."   
  
Sighing in defeat, Harry managed to sputter out something to the effect of, "Do we have to go back to how it was before, or can we still hang out?"   
  
There was a pause.   
  
A really, really long pause.   
  
Like, damn, this pause was freakin' HUGE.   
  
It was still going.   
  
And going.   
  
And going.   
  
Like the Energizer bunny!   
  
Harry vaguely wondered if it would ever end.   
  
And then it did!   
  
One last bit of pause for old time's sake...   
  
And then Draco smiled.   
  
Draco smiled. Draco _smiled_! It took Harry's breath away to think that of the entirety of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he and he alone had managed to make Draco Malfoy smile like that.   
  
"Well, if you insist, Potter."   
  


* * *

  
  
The preparations had been made. The boys of Hogwarts were now prepared to do their task, and the girls had no clue about what was coming to them. If a niggling voice in the back of Harry's head warned him that this might be going too far, he ignored it. The next day, he would be the one to sit across from Hermione and learn her deepest, darkest secret. He rather suspected it would involve Ron somehow, but he decided it would be better not to guess. He also wondered what he, himself would say if asked such a question. Would he talk about how he was responsible for Cedric's death? Or maybe the fact that even hearing his mother pleading with Voldemort for mercy was better than never hearing her at all? Or would he say something about Cho?   
  
All in all, Harry was very glad he wasn't female.   
  
The boys marched almost militarily into the Great Hall and sat down to the specific female they had chosen or been assigned, Harry across from Hermione, Ron across from Ginny, Draco across from Pansy, and so on. Hermione glanced at Harry with a questioning look in her eye which quickly turned suspicious. Shit. Need to relax. Calm down! Harry commanded himself as a faltering smile flitted across his face. "Morning, 'Mione," he heard himself squeak like he hadn't since he was 12 and his voice was breaking.   
  
Suddenly, he heard a shout.   
  


* * *

  
  
[A/N] Okay guys, after this come the endings! This is your last chance to send me your ideas 'cause I'm gonna post those tonight! 


	9. El Fin

Ending #1 (ithinkineedanewname)

  
  
"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!"   
  
Professor McGonagal stormed into the Great Hall, her usual scowl replaced by one even more hideous and frightening. "Professor Snape has just--err--_informed_ me that a group of students have been making a rather _large_ amount of Truth Serum. It is, of course, against the rules for any student to use a Truth Serum on any of their fellow students. Now, we teachers have pretended to ignore this little...._contest_ between boys and girls, and I insist that it ends immediately."   
  
At this point, Professor McGonagal whipped out her wand and struck a pose. "BOYS! SURRENDER NOW!"   
  
Professor Snape ran into the room, shedding what looked like ropes, chains, and a gag as he stormed in and cried, "NEVER, SHE-BITCH!" With this he pulled his own wand from its hidden pocket in his robes and aimed it at the older woman. "EXPELLIARMUS!"   
  
"FINITE INCANTATEM! Who do you think I am, Gilderoy Lockhart? I'm not falling for your stupid little Expelliarmus! DENSAUGEO!"   
  
Professor Snape eeped and somersaulted away from the spell he knew would give him large teeth. Harry saw Hermione wince-- Malfoy had cast the same spell on her in fourth year, albeit on accident. Seething, the greasy-haired Potions professor jumped up and wrote "MINERVA WEARS LEATHER THONGS" in the air with his wand and stuck his tongue out at her.   
  
McGonagal wrote "BECAUSE SEVERUS ASKS HER TO" underneath. As Snape retched she took the opportunity to shriek "TARANTALLEGRA!"   
  
The students watched in amazement as Snape danced around the room crying, "I'm BLIND! BLIIIIIIND!"   
  
It was at this point that Dumbledore stood and bellowed, "FINITE INCANTATEM!" The fiery words dissipated from the air and Snape tumbled over on the floor, twitching.   
  
There was a moment of silence before Dumbledore said, "I think it's time to call a truce."   
  


The End   
  
* * *   
  
Ending #2 (Sirius Lee Black)

  
  
Hermione lifted her goblet to drink, staring at Harry the whole while. Harry was certain that she'd notice how his fists were clenched next to him, or worse, that she'd taste something in her pumpkin juice, but she didn't. She finished drinking and set down the goblet. Suddenly, red sparks came flying from the Slytherin table-- the signal from Draco that it was time to ask the question. Taking a deep breath, Harry heard himself-- and nearly every male voice in Hogwarts --ask the dreaded question: "What is your deepest, darkest secret?"   
  
Hermione's eyes widened as she realized what was going on and the words that changed Harry's life poured out of her mouth.   
  
"I'm in love with you--SHIT!" Her hand clapped over her mouth at this point. Harry's eyes were about the size of saucers as the implications of her statement washed over him. When he regained control of himself, he looked around to see if anyone else had heard her. Fortunately, the other girls were all looking similarly appalled and horrified. Guilt flushed through Harry-- who thought up this stupid idea, anyway?   
  
He was yanked out of his reverie by a hand on his shoulder. It was Draco. "C'mon, Potter. Give her our conditions. Jesus, you're white as a ghost-- what'd she tell you?"   
  
Harry shook himself and stood, face still red with embarassment. "Er...right then...Hermione, if you girls don't surrender and end this war, we're going to post all of your secrets. Each boy knows one girl's secret, and we'll compile them and pass around a list of them all."   
  
Hermione gaped at Harry for a second before noticing Draco, at which point her brows rose, as if she'd figured something out. She glanced past Harry-- probably at Pansy, who was her second in command --and nodded. Each girl took out her wand and--   
  
"OBLIVIATE!"   
  
Harry came to himself at the table in the Great Hall, confused. "Harry?" He heard a voice tentatively call. It was Hermione.   
  
"Sorry, what?" Harry couldn't for the life of him figure out why Hermione looked so satisfied as she told him that he'd been dozing. Then he realized that Draco was standing next to him. "Uh...Malfoy? What are you doing over here?"   
  
Hermione broke in again. "You boys were just offering your surrender to us, and admitting that we won the prank war."   
  
Being the brilliant young woman that she was, Hermione had known something was going to happen soon, and had taught all the girls of Hogwarts how to do a basic memory charm. She wasn't Hogwarts' best student for nothing, after all! Now, she just had to get Harry to notice her...   
  


The End   
  
* * *   
  
Ending #3 (Rissa)

  
  
Suddenly, Voldemort entered the room and destroyed everyone and everything. What a badass.   
  


The End   
  
* * *   
  
Ending #4 (Rissa-- the original / 'real' ending)

  
  
Hermione lifted her goblet to drink, staring at Harry the whole while. Harry was certain that she'd notice how his fists were clenched next to him, or worse, that she'd taste something in her pumpkin juice, but she didn't. She finished drinking and set down the goblet. Suddenly, red sparks came flying from the Slytherin table-- the signal from Draco that it was time to ask the question. Taking a deep breath, Harry heard himself-- and nearly every male voice in Hogwarts --ask the dreaded question: "What is your deepest, darkest secret?"   
  
Hermione's eyes widened as she realized what was going on and the words that changed Harry's life poured out of her mouth.   
  
"My reflection was Ron naked--SHIT!" Her hand clapped over her mouth at this point. Harry blinked in confusion.   
  
"You mean your reflection when we hexed the mirrors?" He knew that the spell they'd used worked sort of like a boggart-- you saw whatever would scare you most. But Ron naked? Sure, that'd be scary...but Dementors were much scarier, weren't they? "I don't get it..."   
  
"Thank GOD," Hermione breathed. Not quite sure if the Truth Serum was still working, Harry tentatively asked her to explain it. He was rewarded with a look of anger he thought only possible on Snape's face.   
  
Harry's mind drifted off in thinking, what specifically about Ron being naked would scare Hermione? Was she scared of Ron's obvious crush on her? No, that couldn't be her deepest, darkest secret. Maybe she was just scared of sex? Or scared of boys? Was she--? It suddenly clicked.   
  
"Holy SHIT! You're a les--" he was cut off by Draco's hand on his shoulder.   
  
"C'mon, Potter, give her our conditions." Harry deduced that, since Hermione wouldn't meet his eyes, his suspicions were correct.   
  
"Er...right then...Hermione, if you girls don't surrender and end this war, we're going to post all of your secrets. Each boy knows one girl's secret, and we'll compile them and pass around a list of them all."   
  
Hermione gaped at Harry for a second before noticing Draco, at which point her brows rose, as if she'd figured something out. She glanced past Harry and nodded. "We need a minute to talk." Harry made some vague gesture of assent, and Hermione stalked over to a group of girls, including Pansy, Cho, and Hannah-- he was surprised, he'd never known who the ringleaders of the girls' group were, aside from Pansy and Hermione. The girls huddled close to a table and whispered together for about five minutes before turning back to the boys. They came forward as a group, and Hermione stepped forward, arms at her side, chin up, and nose in the air.   
  
"We agree, but we want to put another condition on the surrender."   
  
By this point the entire room was watching the four girls and the four boys (as Harry and Draco had been joined by Justin and Terry while the girls whispered) and the four. Glancing swiftly at the boys around him, Harry turned back to Hermione. "What condition?"   
  
A quick gesture from Hermione, and suddenly Harry felt Cho's hand on the back of his head, a goblet against his lips, and liquid going down his throat before he could stop it. He finally reacted and shoved Cho away-- it still hadn't even really registered to him that it was her, and she was probably lucky he hadn't instinctively tried to knock her unconscious. Gagging noises next to him told him that Draco had also been made a victim by Pansy. Justin and Terry had rushed back into the ranks when the first sign of trouble had showed, so now everyone was staring at Hermione, Harry, and Draco to see what would happen.   
  
"What's your deepest, darkest secret?" Hermione smirked a smirk that the King of Smirks, otherwise known as Draco Malfoy, would have been proud of, had the situation not been so dire.   
  
"I'M GAY! FUCK!"   
  
A bunch of thoughts hit Harry all at the same time. The most prominent ones, in no pariticular order, were the following: one, that everyone had heard him. Two, that he hadn't even known he was gay! Three, that he'd sworn loudly in front of all the teachers. Four, that his voice hadn't been the only one saying those three words.   
  
This last thought made its way to the front of everything else and Harry turned to stare an absolutely petrified Draco Malfoy, who was staring back at Harry with a hand clapped over his mouth and his cheeks as pink as such a pale person could have.   
  
Girls fainted. So did Ron. Dumbledore laughed. Hermione swayed to the floor in relief. Ginny cried.   
  
Well, shit, Harry thought. At least we won. Sort of.   
  


The End (for real)


	10. Commentary

Author Comments:

  
  
For the record, I originally expected the ending to turn out with Hermione having a crush on Ron, instead of being a lesbian, but I decided it would be even more amusing this way (and I still had to tie off that bit about her not admitting what her reflection was, too).   
  
I'm sorry to you guys who commented and said that you didn't want it to be slashy at all, but I intended that from the start, too. Hey, at least it wasn't your only option! And it was only implied, too! Of course, that's mostly because I suck at writing anything really romantic and/or sexy, but anyway.   
  
I'm also sorry for the girl sympathizers, 'cause I wanted the boys to win from the start, too, 'cause Harry NEVER loses! But I didn't want it to be a straight-out win, either, 'cause that would just be too easy. I figured it'd be much cooler to let the girls have the last word, even if the boys won. Plus I got my punchline in!   
  
Let's see, what else do I have to say. Oh yeah, someone (I forget who--sorry!) said that the idea of having them get the girls' deepest darkest secrets was a bad one because what if a girl's secret was, for example, being raped or something...well, anyway, in the world I wrote this fic in, that sort of thing doesn't exist (hurray for light-hearted fiction), so it was sort of a non-issue. But just for the record, I do NOT endorse the forcing of secrets out of anyone! Don't try this at home, kids!   
  
Err, right, so anyway...thank you EVERYONE who has left me kick ass comments and shit, 'cause it just made my day and got me through actually writing the whole thing. AND thanks for being patient with this last update, 'cause it took me a while to really get myself together 'cause I had college finals and family trips and all this other shit to deal with, and I'm really proud that I did finish it after all.   
  
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, Happy Holidays to everyone else, and Happy New Year to ALL! =)   
  
Love, Rissa 


	11. To the Lesbian

Um, wow. Okay. People think I'm homophobic now o_O i have ZERO clue who wrote me this because the BRILLIANT reviewer didn't want to sign their name, "in case a homophobic reads this." This of course makes it more difficult to respond to the review, since I don't have an email address, so I have to do it here and all you folks who thought I ACTUALLY updated this fic (despite the fact that it's over) will be disappointed and lynch mob me.   
  
But in case you're still reading this and you wanna know what's going on, here's the review I received:   
  
"Why do you think it so funny for it* to be a lesbian! I do take offence to that because I am, and refuse to sign in using my name in case a homophobic reads this. Other then that it was a funny story. But the characters were extremely 00C. Did you intend this?"   
* I must assume that "it" is Hermione. I think she would take offence, since we're all worried about that. ;)   
  
Now, I am a bisexuelle myself. So insulting gays and lesbians is not my thing. I don't think it's "so funny for it to be a lesbian," the only part of the issue that I thought was funny was the seeing-herself-as-Ron-naked bit (since the theory was that you see in the mirror what you're most scared of...) Okay I'm gonna take this bit out of parentheses because it's more important. I don't really think lesbians are scared of men, I wanted the implication to be more like, she knows ron has a thing for her, and she's worried he's gonna make his move on her, and she's gonna have to turn him down and hurt him. THAT'S her biggest fear (at the moment. Fuck voldemort.)   
  
So yeah. I'm not trying to insult lesbians or any stupid shit like that. What a waste of time that part of the question is! I'd applaud you for coming out to me but you signed anonymously so it really doesn't count, does it? :)   
  
As for characters being out of character. It wasn't intentional per se, but I knew I was doing it and just didn't care. The most out of character was Harry, as he's not usually that self-confident (or vengeful). But the kids are all in fifth year now and in order to make the fic work I HAD to make him more self-confident and vengeful. I mean I COULD have made Draco be the one trying to get the boys together for vengeance, but he would have been even less likely to do it-- he'd want to do it on his own. And Harry probably wouldn't have accepted. So yes, the out of character-ness is....mostly intentional.   
  
Feel better now? 


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